Star Wars’ Mark Hamill Addresses Horrifying Ewok Theory

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Most of the time, if you're enjoying the movie that you're watching and you're really engrossed in the story, you won't notice those little moments that, perhaps, don't make a great deal of sense. If, however, you watch a great movie many times, you might eventually start to notice the things that got by you the first few times. At this point, it feels like the original Star Wars trilogy has been nitpicked to death, but there is at least one element, involving the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, that apparently Mark Hamill had never considered, and now that it's been brought to his attention, he's trying to forget he ever heard it.

It's an easy moment to overlook, and so many people likely have, but a hilarious meme was brought to Mark Hamill's attention which suggests that the adorable Ewoks may have actually eaten somebody. And now that the suggestion was made to the Star Wars actor, he says he's going to simply try to never think about it again.

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I, like Mark Hamill, had never considered this, and now that I have, I'm more than a little terrified. But I suppose, the argument makes some sense. In Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, Leia is the first of her team to meet an Ewok, and when the rest of the crew is captured by the little furry things, they find Leia already at the Ewok village, and with a change of clothes. She's wearing a dress that she certainly wasn't wearing before, and so where did it come from?

There's no sign of other humans, and certainly not enough time has passed for the dress to have been made specifically for Leia, so the idea here is that the dress is left over from a human woman the Ewoks actually consumed. It's a theory, and I suppose it fits what few facts we have, but it's more than a little terrifying to consider, as Mark Hamill points out.

I mean, are there other explanations regarding how the dress got there? Sure. There's no particular reason to believe that Ewoks have never seen humans before. There are a couple of made-for-TV Ewok movies, now found on Disney+ that show humans crash landing on the forest moon and, while those movies are not officially considered canon anymore, one of the previous chronologies given for the movies indicates they take place prior to Return of the Jedi, and so perhaps the dress came from Catarine Towani and was left behind. How's that for a deep cut.

Even without that specific connection to a piece of Star Wars media that we've seen, there are countless explanations that are technically possible that don't include Ewoks eating people. Having said that, The movie does indicate that the Ewoks plan to cook Luke and Han and serve them for dinner at a banquet for C-3PO, so this explanation does also fit.

Dirk Libbey
Content Producer/Theme Park Beat

CinemaBlend’s resident theme park junkie and amateur Disney historian, Dirk began writing for CinemaBlend as a freelancer in 2015 before joining the site full-time in 2018. He has previously held positions as a Staff Writer and Games Editor, but has more recently transformed his true passion into his job as the head of the site's Theme Park section. He has previously done freelance work for various gaming and technology sites. Prior to starting his second career as a writer he worked for 12 years in sales for various companies within the consumer electronics industry. He has a degree in political science from the University of California, Davis.  Is an armchair Imagineer, Epcot Stan, Future Club 33 Member.